


sewing up my heart again

by somethingdifferent



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentions of Canonical Character Deaths, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1370197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art Bell and Beth Childs and Beth Childs; <em>A girl stepped in front of a train, and you don't know that you know her, but you do. You're waiting on a dead person. Someone is sitting in the passenger seat.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	sewing up my heart again

**Author's Note:**

> inspired largely by richard siken's _you are jeff_ :
> 
> "This time everyone has the best intentions. You have cancer. Let's say  
> you have cancer. Let's say you've swallowed a bad thing and now it's  
> got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure. You see  
> what I mean but you're happy anyway, and that's okay, it's a love story  
> after all, a lasting love, a wonderful adventure with lots of action,  
> where the mirror says mirror and the hand says hand and the front  
> door never says Sorry Charlie. So the doctor says you need more  
> stitches and the bruise cream isn't working. So much for the facts. Let's  
> say you're still completely in the dark but we love you anyway. We  
> love you. We really do."

 

 

 

 

morning morning morning  
will wake me up cold  
mourning mourning mourning  
reminds me that i am getting old

rosa, grimes

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

_1_

Here's the first part: a girl steps in front of a train. You don't know that, though. Go back. You're not supposed to be here yet.

 

 

_2_

Here's the real first part: You're calling Beth on her phone, but she isn't picking up. You call her, again and again, as if frequency is the antidote to whatever it is she swallowed down that made her so goddamn late, so goddamn difficult, so  _goddamn--_  your police cruiser pulls up to the curb, its wheel climbed up on the pavement, and your hand is tight around a folder with nothing but a gunshot and a series of easily traceable steps, clean, fast, _three-two-one-pullthetrigger_.

A girl stepped in front of a train, and you don't know that you know her, but you do. You're waiting on a dead person. Someone is sitting in the passenger seat.

 

 

_3_

Here's the _real_ first part, even if you know about it last: a woman with her country thick on the back of her tongue gives birth to one more girl than she was expecting. A woman in Canada gives birth to a girl with a brain just waiting for itself to become unbalanced, unhinged, tilt just enough to become off-kilter. A woman in America. A woman in Germany. A woman in America. A woman in Italy. A woman. A woman. A woman.

You get the idea.

The twins are screaming in their mother's arms. Don't look away, Art. This bit is important.

 

 

 

_4_

They burned the body which, alright, was the smart thing to do. But you're standing in the morgue with Angie just behind you, and you're certain, suddenly so certain about the face on the screen, the girl who looks like Beth who looks like Beth who looks like Beth. She's cold, in death, her lips turned blue and blood frozen on the edges of her cheeks. She never liked the cold. You go to the train station, and you go to the precinct, and you go to Sarah Manning's house. You go to the interrogation room, and in it is the girl who looks like Beth who looks like the killer who looks like the victim who is the killer who is the victim who is the suicidal girl on the train tracks, and you're probably going to throw up, now. Take a step back, dipshit.

Beth never liked the cold. You sit down across from the girl who _isn't_ Beth, no matter how much you want her to be, so don't you fucking forget it. Don't you dare fucking forget that.

 

  

 

_5_

So you're asleep and you're dreaming and in your head there is Beth and Beth and Beth. The first Beth is the oldest, the one you know the best, the girl with an eye for detail and some sharp comment on her tongue, her eyes bright, her hair dark and tangled up in the furtherest parts of you. The second looks the same, but she seems smaller somehow, as if she were collapsing, skin clinging to blood clinging to bone, like some dying star slowly folding inward. The last Beth is the one who isn't Beth at all, but you don't know that, not yet at least. She's smiling at you like she hasn't been able to do in months, and you're smiling in return because you don't know what else to do. The girl isn't Beth, but you don't know that yet, and she's wearing her face, and she's speaking in a voice like hers. The three Beths are spread out in your memory, all these parts of her, like pieces of a car wreck that you can't help but watch over and over and over, Beth with her hands on the back of your chair, Beth with her arm around your shoulders, Beth with her fingers on the hollow of your throat. You're dreaming, and you know you're dreaming, so don't reach for any of them. Stop your hands from shaking.

 

  

 

_6_

There's a girl throwing up at a hearing about a civilian shooting, and you don't know her name, but you don't know that yet, so call her Beth. Call her Beth, and don't hold her hand in the waiting room. Tell her to get the details right. Iron everything out until it's burned up to a crisp, and then make her throw up the facts until you can see it as if it had actually happened that way. Call her Beth and don't stare at the line of her neck when she looks away. Call her Beth and tell her to get the story straight. Call her Beth and help her stand up again, because she's done this for you more times than you can count. Call her Beth and don't fucking look at her, don't, don't fucking look her way.

 

 

  

_7_

Replay the last time you speak to her. You aren't looking at her, because you are on the phone, and you're doing something mundane like washing the dishes or restarting your computer or something equally dissatisfying. You don't know it will be the last time you speak to her, so don't pay attention to the conversation aside from what you need to say, from what you need to hear her say. Avoid her attempts at small talk. Avoid the tremor in her voice that says she isn't prepared for this hearing, for any of this. Tell her that you need her to do well. Don't tell her you need _her_ though, because that ship sailed long before you knew there was an ocean, so just tell her she can't screw this up for the both of you and hope it sounds like something prettier on her end of the wire.

You don't remember what your last words to her are, because for two weeks you let the memory slip away, for two weeks you're unaware there were any last words. You don't remember what she said the last time you heard her voice and it was only hers. You wish you said _thank you_. You hope you said _goodbye_.

 

 

 

_8_

There's a girl who isn't Beth sitting across from you, even though she looks exactly like her. There are pictures, too, pictures of girls that look like her, all variations on the original, orange hair on one, thick black eyeliner on the other, red blood and an English accent, same fingerprints, same DNA. Don't look too hard at any of them, because you never got to say goodbye and none of them are really her, and a false Beth is worse than none at all. Look at the girl sitting across from you. She isn't Beth, and you love her anyway, and you're not sure if you do because she is Beth or she isn't, if she's a cheap imitation or another extension of a dead girl's personality.

She's asking you for help with Beth's mouth, with Beth's eyes filled with salt tears designed to drag you under. Take a breath. Don't look at her too hard.

 

  

 

_9_

You won't let yourself think it, but you're almost relieved the last two weeks weren't real. Some selfish part of you is happy she was dead long before she quit the force and left you high and dry, because then at least that part of Beth was still  _yours_.

 

 

 

_10_

Don't look away yet, not even if every part of yourself is screaming at you not to go any further. Pick up your feet. Drag yourself forward. Watch the tapes. Don't blink, not even when she steps in front of the train. Don't fucking look away, because Beth deserves better than a roll of film locked in some dark room and her partner with salt burning the back of his throat. Think of the Beth in your dreams, the first, the second, the third. Only one of them survived, and it sure as hell wasn't the right one. Don't look away, dipshit, this is important. The second Beth killed the first and then jumped with the bodies under a train; the third opened wide her jaw and swallowed her predecessor whole. All three of them are variations on the same girl. You love her, whichever one you can have. What does that say about you?

 

 

 

_11_

You're dreaming. This is before the first part, before the girl steps off of the tracks. Beth is running down an alley, gun in hand, and there's a woman up ahead. You're screaming _don't shoot don't shoot_ , but she does anyway, and the woman falls. You're sitting next to her in the alley, and there's a dead woman on the ground, cell phone in her bloodless hand. Beth's got her fingers on the woman's throat, but she isn't Beth, not really. Look at the ground; the woman has changed her face to match the killer's. Everyone is holding a gun now. Even you.

  

 

 

_12_

Let's say, to start, there's a girl named Beth sitting in a chair across from yours. Except that suddenly the chair has changed position and her wrists are clamped with metal and her name isn't Beth anymore, it's Sarah. So let's change the story to fit this new scenario, because there's a girl named Sarah in a holding cell with handcuffs on her wrists and the eyes of a dead girl in her head. She's crying, and she looks like the first girl, the one who divided into two halves long ago, like some kind of cruel mitosis, so there are three Beths and only one of them is in front of you at any given time, and only one of them can live. Keep up, Art. Which Beth is in the holding cell?

  

  

 

_13_

 Let's say, to start, there's a girl named Beth sitting in a chair across from yours. Except that suddenly there isn't just one Beth, not even two or three, there are dozens lined up in the holding cell, stitched to the furniture, painted to the walls like so many childish drawings of girls. One is larger than the others, towering over, ready to devour and be devoured, her blood ice blue in her veins, her lips cold and parted. One of the others has a knife in her side. One of them is under a train. One of them has a bullet in her head. One of them is sitting in a chair across from yours. They're all named Beth, so which one do you choose? How could you possibly tell the difference? Pay attention, Art. The Beth across from you is the only one left. You can take her or leave her.

 

 

 

_14_

Let's say, hypothetically, there's a girl named Beth who's supposedly an only child, but really she's not because there are at least three other people in the world who look just like her. You've taken biology, basic shit, stuff any high school senior would know, so you have some vague sense of how improbable ( _impossible_ ) any of this is, but here we are, detective, so listen up. There's a dead girl named Beth burned up and thrown away in some park in New York and you're pretty sure she has multiple twins, or doppelgängers, or clones, because there are at least three Beths that you're aware of and one is sitting across from you. They've all got the same DNA, same fingerprints, and that's supposed to be impossible, even twins have different fingerprints. But here you are. There's a girl named Sarah sitting across from you and you have no fucking clue what she is. Follow the evidence. What is Sarah Manning?

 

 

 

_15_

There are at least five Beths you're aware of now, one in the quarry, one in the bathroom, one in the holding cell, one in the suburbs, one in the train station. You watch the Beth in the suburbs, the way she wrings her hands, pacing the front porch, only to turn and go back inside. She's nervous; you wonder if she knows about all of the others. You think they must all see each other and think they're the ones being copied, think they're the one with a million different girls who are all variations on themselves. You wonder if Beth looked at Sarah in the train station and saw herself, like some vicious sort of mirror. Watch the Beth in the suburbs. Don't think that's what your Beth could've been someday. Follow the evidence. Down the rabbit hole. Once more unto the breach. 

 

 

_16_

There's some point where you figure it out, and even then you're not quite sure that you believe it. Twins have the same DNA, but that many wouldn't look at the same. Doppelgängers would have different DNA. Clones, though. That's the other explanation, the one you still can't quite believe, because shit like that is illegal, certainly, if not totally impossible. Aren't there medical complications, even with animals and plants? Who has the money? Who has the power? Who has their hand on the trigger of the gun?

Beth is staring at you from five sets of eyes. She's all burned up. Follow the evidence, dipshit. What are these creatures you see before you?

  

  

 

_17_

Let's say you find Sarah Manning again. Let's say she's frightened. There's multiples of her walking around, mirrors and mirrors and mirrors, like when you walk into a funhouse and everything's distorted, like you're waving your hand and suddenly there's ten of you waving back. Is Beth real? Was she? Is the question even important? There are three Beths in front of you, but one of them is not her. Two of them are dead, both under a train. Beth is _dead_ , dipshit, she's been dead and she's gonna continue being dead. Don't fucking look away, this part is important. Don't look away, please. Oh god, don't look away.

 

 

 

_18_

Sarah Manning is in the holding cell, and she's crying over something that was hers, but you look at her and you still see some dead girl. When she speaks, she doesn't have Beth's voice anymore, and there it is, the twist of the knife in the lungs. Breathe, Art. You have to know what comes next, that's your job. Beth doesn't live here anymore, Sarah Manning does. You've got to help someone. It might as well be her.

 

 

 

_19_

Here's the last part: you're sitting in front of a girl named Sarah, and she's telling you what you need to know. There's women across the ocean with a dead girl's face, there's women in the morgue with a dead girl's face. There's some science behind it, not that you can understand that type of thing. She's got a plan, you think. She's got an expression on her face, like Beth used to have, when she was determined to do something really, really stupid. You're protesting, you're arguing with her, because that's what you do to show you care about what happens next. You tell her she can't ask this of you. You're going to help her anyway. That's what you always do, Art.

 

 

 

_20_

There's a girl is your car and you don't know her name, but you think you do, so call her Beth, okay? She's here, in front of you. You've still got time, detective, even if that's a lie. Smile. Say thank you, Beth, you're the best partner I ever had. Say you love her. Say you're sorry.

Now wake up.

 

 

 

 


End file.
